This article gathers four questions argued about most: have rents gone wild, would the market take care of everyone, is the state a bad manager, and is red tape stopping construction. Each is answered from the registers Slovenia has, with what the registers do not know.
Prices, rents, wages
From 2020 to 2025 flat prices rose to index 169.5 and wages to 130.3: prices outran wages by 30%. Registered rents rose to 132.3 by 2024 and wages to 124.1: only 7% above wages.
The crisis is in buying, not renting, at least in the register. Registered rents are a lower bound: asking rents in Ljubljana are higher.
Indices, 2020 = 100. Rents are registered contracts (a lower bound; asking rents in Ljubljana run about 1.5× higher) and stop in 2024, because 2025 is not yet complete. Wages: SURS mean net wage, chain-linked at 2023.
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
Your flat, your income
For a 55 m² flat in Ljubljana at the asking rent (€18.7/m²), a person at the second income decile's cut-off would pay 92% of monthly income, a person on the median 63%, and one at the ninth decile's cut-off 38%. At the registered 2024 rent (€9.6/m²) it is 47%, 32% and 20%. Buying would take 16.4, 11.3 and 6.8 years of total income.
Pick your decile and the size of the flat. The arithmetic is simple: rent times area, divided by monthly income.
Slovenia is already private
74.8% of people live in a home they own, 6.8% rent at market price and 18.4% at a reduced rent or free. The state, municipalities and funds hold 3.0% of dwellings. The 1991 privatisation already ran the "make it all private" experiment.
Reduced rent includes non-profit, employer and free housing and living rent-free with relatives; EU-SILC does not separate them.
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
Who is overburdened
16.5% of market renters spend more than 40% of disposable income on housing, against 3.5% of those at reduced rent and 2.6% of owners without a loan. The market weighs most on those who depend on it.
Overburdened: housing costs above 40% of disposable income (rent or interest, upkeep, energy, utilities, net of subsidies).
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
Is the state the worst manager?
Partly. Among blocks built 1946–1990 with up to ten dwellings, 22% of the mostly public ones were renovated since 2010 against 29% of the private ones; larger private blocks more often still (43% and 63%). But 84% of public dwellings are in blocks where the public owner is only a co-owner, and those do not differ from private ones.
Blocks built 1946–1990 with four dwellings or more. Renovation years are what owners report. The energy class exists only where a certificate was issued, at sale or letting.
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
A tax shapes the flats
A new flat up to 120 m² carries 9.5% VAT, a larger one 22%. 229 new flats of 115–120 m² were sold against only 30 of 120–125 m²: 7.6 times as many below the threshold, against 1.4 for resold flats. Just below the threshold there are 101% more new flats than there would be without it. Developers design to the tax.
Flat sales by usable area, 2 m² bins. A new build is a reading only where it is flagged; before 2013 there is no flag. Expected: a degree-5 polynomial fitted outside 108–132 m².
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
Red tape
The median wait for a building permit rose from 93 days (applications 2015–17) to 130 (2022–24); one application in ten waits more than 324 days. The office matters more than the law: from 50 days in Ljutomer to 350 in Sežana. Ljubljana takes 195 days, up from 137.
But a slow office does not build less: the link between an office's speed and the number of new homes is 0.01. Land and demand decide where building happens.
The administrative phase at the administrative unit only: from application to legal force. The time before the application (design, consents) and refusals are not in the register. Units with at least 60 full permits in 2022–24.
Source: ETN, SURS, Eurostat · bloki.si
The wait by administrative unit
Median days to a building permit in legal force for applications in 2022–24, by administrative unit. Hover over a unit.
A property tax and empty flats
Two claims about the tax, which the property-tax study tested with a simulation and with registration and electricity-meter data.
§ How it is calculated
Indices. Prices and rents are the transaction register's indices (price ÷ GURS generalised value, rent as a yield), national, by year. Wages: SURS mean monthly net wage; two tables disagree on 2023, so they are chain-linked rather than spliced.
Income. Decile cut-offs of equivalised disposable income (EU-SILC), read as one adult's income. A family with the same equivalised income has more money, but also more people.
Rents and price. The registered rent is the median of Ljubljana's 2024 flat contracts and is a lower bound, because some lettings are not filed or are filed too low. The asking rent is today's offer of 40–80 m² flats and is an upper one. The purchase price is the median of 2024–25 flat sales.
What is not in the registers. Who buys (the buyer is not recorded), the non-profit rent (the register's code is not it), and the time before a permit application.
Can the Bloki server answer questions like these?
The server gives prices, rents and values for any area or flat. It holds no incomes and no waiting times.
- Yes
What do flats and rents cost where I live?
Median sales and lettings with n and spread, asking prices beside the GURS value, and a municipality's price index.
market_statsasking_pricesprice_index - Yes
What is this flat worth?
An estimate from comparable sales, with its spread and the measured error for that kind of flat.
estimate_value - Partly
Can I afford a flat on my income?
Prices and rents yes; it holds no incomes. You work out the share yourself, as in the calculator above.
market_statsasking_prices - Yes
How many lettings are filed at all?
Filed leases per 100 dwellings in an area, beside its tourist beds.
letting_gap - No
How long will my building permit take?
The server lists the acts and open procedures on a parcel and in a municipality, but it does not compute waiting times.
building_permits - No
Will a property tax bring rents down?
The tax simulation is not a server tool. The card above sums up the study.
data_limitations